3.

ALEKSEI

The Italians couldn’t make it any more obvious that they didn’t want us here. It was comical. Really.

I leaned back in my seat, eyeing the fuming man in front of me lazily, knowing there was shit he could do about this current situation. I had the documents to prove it, and he had… rage. As I said—comical.

“This is bullshit!” Matteo Rossi spat, his eyes blazing with unbridled fury.

It was time for round two, it seemed.

If looks could kill, he would have obliterated my brother and me, but alas, it couldn’t.

“It’s business,” I corrected. “You don’t have to like it to do it. Didn’t your daddy teach you that?” I asked, sinking my teeth into the corner of my bottom lip, knowing I’d hit a nerve.

What? Sometimes, I liked to stir shit up, too.

Too bad, I wasn’t here to cater to a made man’s feelings. I was here to get my empire back under control before Igor got any more asinine ideas.

“Get out!” He hissed, his gaze burning with fury. “He’s dead. We don’t have to do shit!”

My little brother, Mikhail, decided it was a good time to get trigger-happy.

He fired three shots at the wall behind Matteo’s head, the bullets leaving holes in the drywall.

Nicholas, their capo, who had been quiet all this while, silently observing us, reached for his gun, pointing it at my brother’s head.

“Let’s calm down, people. There’s no need for the hostility.” I said the last part with a pointed glare at Mikhail.

We weren’t here to fuck with the Italians. All it would take was one wrong move to fuck things up for me and kick me out of the good graces of my father totally. I didn’t want that to happen because then I’d have to go to war with my father over my position in the Bratva. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Ty chertovski sumasshedshiy? U tebya yest’ zhelaniye umeret’?” I hissed, glaring at Mikhail.

Mikhail shrugged unapologetically, unbothered by the fact that he had a gun pointed at his head. “On stal razdrazhat’. Moi ushi nachali bolet’.”

I shook my head at him, turning to face Nicholas and Matteo. I opened my mouth to continue speaking, but the door flew open at that moment.

I groaned internally, slowly turning to face the intruder with a scowl firmly in place to scare him off.

For fuck’s sake, I still had a heap of work to get…

My train of thought halted when my eyes landed on the woman in the doorway. She had on a form-fitting black leather dress that hugged her curves in all the right places, especially her full tits that threatened to spill out the top of her dress.

Fuck me.

She had this serene, otherworldly beauty about her that drew the attention of people from a mile away; men and women alike.

Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, showing off her perfectly sculpted face from her cheekbones to her sharp jawline and her bee-stung lips painted a siren red color that complemented the olive tone of her skin.

I found my lips moving before I could process my words. “I change my mind,” I said without taking my eyes off of her. “I’ll have her instead.”

She scowled, her eyes spitting venom at me.

“Like fuck you will!” Matteo burst out, storming over to the woman’s side. She had an uncanny resemblance to him, so I knew they were siblings. “I’m done with this conversation, Niko. Get them out of here,” he hurled at me, directing his sister to the open door until they both disappeared from sight.

It was their capo’s turn to scowl at me now. “She’s not up for bargain,” he hissed.

“Way I see it, you have no choice. Wouldn’t want to get the law and everything involved in our little issue, now would we?”

Rocco had been so blinded by his thirst for destruction, that he’d forgotten to read between the lines. He signed a contract I had my lawyers put together hastily without reading over it.

His promised reward for being his hired guns included taking half of his business partners when he took over as capo, access to their ports, and ten million dollars. If he failed to fulfill his end of the bargain, I automatically got the right to take anything from him.

For a man who had a lot to lose, that was stupid on his part. I didn’t give a fuck, though. His stupidity benefited me in the end. Now that he was dead, I could take anything I wanted from him.

“It’s foolish of you to threaten me with the cops, Aleksei. Need I remind you who came to New York just a decade ago?”

I knew the Cosa Nostra had the cops in New York eating out of their palms. At least the two top families. I did my research on them, and there were many times they escaped murder charges and prison altogether. Any crime short of a tax fraud wouldn’t get those cuffs snapped around their wrists, and so far, they’d done a good job at keeping that under wraps.

Mikhail shot daggers at Nicholas with his eyes. Knowing him, he was imagining ways he could make the latter bleed, while dragging his suffering out for days.

“I have his signature on paper,” I reminded Nicholas just in case he forgot who had the upper hand here. “I have the right to take anything from Rocco.”

“I heard as much. What changed?”

Mikhail cocked a brow at me as if to say he wanted to know why, too. My initial request had been Rocco’s shares in all their legitimate family businesses. Going from that to taking his daughter as a wife wasn’t exactly profitable.

“Why do you want her?” Nicholas asked.

Same question I needed to ask myself the moment I stepped out of this house.

I shrugged, saying the first thing that came to my mind. “Protection.”

There was no guarantee that the Rossis wouldn’t try to kill me or my family after I took everything away from them. They’d think twice knowing I had their daughter’s life in the palm of my hands.

Maybe I hadn’t completely lost my mind then.

“That’s not all I want, though,” I said, earning a deeper scowl from Nicholas. “I want my twenty million dollars and Cherie.”

He eyed me like I’d grown an extra head. “That piece of shit building? It hasn’t been functioning for over a decade.”

“I know. Leave the renovation to me. So, do we have a deal? I marry the girl and take the building?”

Nicholas’ jaw hardened. “I’m not going to decide for Ariana.”

Ariana.

She had a fucking perfect name. It suited her perfectly.

I crossed my arms, leaning back in my seat to arch a brow at him. “So, you’re willing to lose part of your business instead?”

Maybe I’d been wrong about Nicholas being smart, after all.

A wise man would take my offer without a second thought. To them, I was taking the shorter end of the stick when I could take everything from them.

He rose to his feet, tucking his gun back into the waistband of his pants. “That’s none of your business.” He pinned Mikhail with a hard glare. “YA byl by ostorozhneye na tvoyem meste. Ya nikogda ne promakhivayus’.”

He walked out of the office, closing the door behind him. I turned to my stupid brother who had a grin on his lips.

“Did you really have to pull the trigger? They’re being hospitable right now. They could have kicked us out!” I scowled.

“That’s impossible. We hold all the power, remember?” He picked up a ballpoint pen from the desk, twirling it between his fingers. “For a second there, I thought you’d lost your mind. Choosing the girl was wicked smart.”

“Have more faith in me, brother,” I lied like that was the reason I choose her. Like I wasn’t sporting a boner just imagining those brown doe eyes staring up at me as I choked her on cock.

Fuck!

This was the first time I had such a visceral reaction to a female since I hit puberty.

I subtly adjusted myself in my pants, so Mikhail didn’t notice and decide to put on his detective cap.

He kicked his feet on the desk. “Actually, I change my mind. You have lost your mind. We’re getting nothing profitable from this deal.”

I rolled the kink out of my neck as I adjusted in my seat. Fuck, I needed to crash. I’d been running on overdrive ever since I got that call from Igor followed by a visit from Viktor. Things were serious, and I had to act accordingly.

“Wait until the cash starts rolling in, little brother. You just wait."